


Merely Players

by Sour_Idealist



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Amnesia, Gen, Lies & Stories, Performance, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 21:28:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14434449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/pseuds/Sour_Idealist
Summary: The Mighty Nein does a bit of busking, and Molly considers the nature of performance.





	Merely Players

**Author's Note:**

> Written before episodes 13 & 14, and thus exists in a slight AU where the meeting with Cree happened about an adventure later.

“So,” Fjord says. “If Molly can juggle –”

“Not to get silly, here,” Molly interjects, “but we could, if we're that desperate for money, maybe sell some of the extremely valuable items we're carrying around and don't actually need? Like, that lovely pink bag – we have a wagon, we don't need it.”

Everyone looks at him. There is a pointed silence.

“Or not,” he says, putting up his hands.

“Molly can juggle,” Fjord says. “Maybe you, Caleb, maybe you can add a little extra flash, you know, with those lights of yours?”

“I'll do my best,” Caleb says, straightening a little. “And while everyone is distracted, Nott can –”

“Yes,” Nott says, picking an invisible pocket. She catches Molly's eye. “I know, I know. Only grumpy people who don't look hungry.”

“I can have my duplicates too and we can dance,” Jester offers.

“Oh!” Beau sits up. “Maybe I can flip around, you know, do some stuff.”

“This is turning into quite a show,” Fjord says. Caleb nods, glancing at Nott; the two of them are starting to shrink into themselves, inching closer to each other. It's Caleb who says, “We're not trying to start another circus, here, just make a little coin. Right?”

“We can switch in and out,” Molly suggests. “I'll juggle for a bit, then Jester can dance, Beau can do... whatever it is she thinks she can do.” Beau flips him off.

“Sounds like a plan,” Fjord says, smiling at him. Fjord's smile is honest and bright and warms Molly somewhere foolish under his breastbone, and if he had been part of the circus, they could have run any con they liked. No honest man seems quite that honest.

They do set up, too, on the edge of the little town square, and Molly positions himself so the sun won't get in his eyes and gets the swords dancing tip-down on his palms, on his arms, on the tip of his nose. It's nothing worthy of the circus; there's no story to it, no tension. No heart. You've got to give the audience something to root for; they've got to believe that you _might_ cut yourself, and that there is something special and extraordinary that keeps you safe, something more than sweaty boring hours of practice, and further, they've got to believe that the world will be a better, a more beautiful place if you make it out of the act alive. Molly is just some brightly-colored fuck sending deadly weapons hopping through the noonday sun. But it's worth a few coins, and he's at least good at it. (He can see Nott skittering around the edge of the crowd. She's picking her targets well.)

After a while Jester starts to look bored, so Molly gives the swords a last flip, sheathes them as part of the catch, and bows. Jester bounces forward to take his place, her duplicates shimmying out of her body – amateur, her timing's off, but there's a hint of something there. Molly joins Fjord, who's leaning against a sun-warmed wall.

“You're good at that,” Fjord says. “Did someone at the circus teach you? Orna, maybe?”

“No, no,” Molly says, leaning back until his horns tap against the wall. “No, it was –” Fuck, what was it he'd told them? The priest – no, it was the sacrifice story. “No, it was my mother. Things got very boring, you know, being a temple prisoner, so she started juggling. She started small, you know, gardening trowels, and then she had a lot of time, so she started juggling bigger and bigger things, and, well. Here we are. And, you know, I ran all over the place when I was wee, all energy, and she needed to give me something to do, so... here we are.”

“I see, I see,” Fjord says, nodding. “Your ma sounds like a nice lady.”

“Oh, she is,” Molly says, smiling. And she is, too – clever, and stubborn, and impossible to break, and funny, and loved him enough to take her life in her hands so he wouldn't grow up as a sacrificed slave. She's a lie and a daydream, of course, woven out of a dozen plays and a few pieces of people he's known, but she's not a bad creation for all of that. “I take after her.”

“I hope I'll get to meet her some day,” Fjord says, smiling. His eyes don't quite meet Molly's. Molly should hang out with stupider people.

“Orna helped me refine it, though,” Molly tacks on, for some stupid reason. Orna was the one to put his swords in his hands.

 _They're yours,_ she said, _and you should use them for something. And you're not talking, but you're listening to us, I can tell. You understand us. Maybe you need to find another way to talk._ They'd been dull, back then; he sharpened them later, once he'd learned from her, and once he'd found it in him to speak again. To speak out loud. Juggling had never seemed like a language, but it had been something more than silence, and that helped.

“She was helping me turn it into an act,” Molly adds, “but, well. You know.” Out across the square, Nott's cutting the purse of a man in an expensive and deeply ugly jacket, and Jester and her duplicates are spinning in a circle, holding hands. Nott is going to make them a lot more money than the hat upturned on the ground, today, but any way the job gets done. “Here we are.”

Maybe he'll get a real act together, someday. Maybe one day he won't need one. Or, hell – maybe they really all will put up a show together. Who knows?

 


End file.
